At the moment of her sister’s entrance Sally had been slipping into a little blue dressing gown which had been her mother’s final gift the day before their parting. The dressing gown did not have a utilitarian appearance, since it was made of a soft blue, light woolen material with little clusters of yellow roses scattered over the design and with blue ribbons and lace about the throat and sleeves.
In response to her sister’s speech Sally gathered about her the dressing gown, which she had not yet fastened, and immediately started to leave the room.
“I shall be very glad indeed to talk to Aunt Patricia, but not to you, Alice, nor do I ever intend to forgive you. I suppose you followed old Jean and me to the château and have drawn your own inference from what you observed. Do you know, Alice, I have often wondered why the puritanical conscience is always so suspicious of other people?” And in this last speech of Sally’s there was more of truth that she could fully appreciate.
But if in this final analysis she were speaking the truth, the first part of her remark had been a complete falsehood. At the present time there was nothing she desired so little as being forced into making her confession to Miss Patricia Lord, a severe spinster with no consideration for human folly. Would any one else on earth be more difficult or more unrelenting?
In the past hour or more, following her conversation at the château, Sally had been facing one of the hardest experiences of life.
Her weeks of self-sacrifice and devotion had been not only unnecessary, they had been absurd. If only she could have enjoyed the inward satisfaction of considering herself a heroine or a martyr! But she had risked her own reputation and the young French officer’s life to what end?
As the two girls entered Miss Patricia’s room, Sally, accompanied by her sister, whose existence on earth she refused to recognize, considered that Miss Patricia appeared as implacable as a stone image. Yet one could scarcely compare her to the Sphinx. That ancient stone figure with the head of a woman and the body of a lioness looks as if she had devoted the many centuries since her creation to solving the riddles of human life.
Miss Patricia would consider anything but plain speaking a sheer waste of energy and truth. There were no riddles in Miss Patricia’s mental category.
Nevertheless, Miss Patricia’s voice did not sound unkind when she suggested that Sally occupy the solitary chair in her bedroom, although undoubtedly this would leave the elderly woman standing as well as Alice. But then Sally did not realize how appealing her appearance was at this moment even to so harsh a critic of human nature.
Sally indolent, Sally dreaming her own small and rather selfish dreams, or a Sally self-assured and self-content were not unfamiliar figures to her world. But Sally confused and tired, hurt and bewildered, not by her own actions or any one’s else, but by a web of circumstance, was a new study.